Jailed for North Korea visit, Ethereum researcher Virgil Griffith on cusp of release

Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Virgil Griffith will soon go home after serving an almost five-year prison term for helping North Korea evade US sanctions.

Griffith was sentenced to 63 months in prison. But US District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel of New York on Wednesday agreed to release Griffith seven months early.

Griffith was eligible for a reduction in his sentence in part because he had “zero criminal history points at the time of sentencing,” the judge noted in his decision.

Alexander Urbelis, Griffith’s lawyer, said calculating his exact date of release is “complicated and opaque.”

“We are still working out the math,” Urbelis said on X. “But with the order being effective on August 2, it should not be long thereafter that Virgil finally comes home.”

North Korea has become the bane of the crypto industry. As of 2023, affiliated cybercrime group Lazarus is estimated to have stolen at least $3.4 billion in cryptocurrencies since it appeared in 2007.

Griffith was arrested in 2019 after a trip to North Korea.

His keynote speech at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference contained information on how to bypass sanctions, prosecutors alleged.

But Griffith’s advocates and his legal team have argued that the presentation did no more than recapitulate widely available information, which could be readily accessed online.

One of Griffith’s lawyers said that the trip was “the culmination of Virgil’s unique and unfortunate curiosity and obsession with North Korea,” crypto site CoinDesk reported.

Griffith, 41, received his prison sentence in 2022 after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The act forbids US citizens from exporting goods, services, or technology to North Korea without a licence from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

He is currently serving his sentence in a federal prison in Michigan,

Brian Klein — who is another lawyer for Griffith and who is now defending software developer Roman Storm against charges he helped Lazarus launder stolen crypto — told the Washington Post that Griffith was “sincerely remorseful.”

Griffiths wasn’t the only one to face blowback after attending the Pyongyang conference.

Alejandro Cao de Benos, a Spanish aristocrat and the founder of advocacy group Korea Friendship Association, was indicted in 2022 by US authorities for allegedly recruiting Griffith. Last year, Cao de Benos was arrested by Spanish authorities, who accused him of aiding North Korea in circumventing international sanctions through crypto.

British national Christopher Emms was also charged last year, alongside Cao de Benos, with the conspiracy to help North Korea access crypto. He had attended the same conference as Griffith.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.